Gold and Rubies
by Me Or The Wallpaper
Summary: A first and last kiss at the very end. Spoilers for 205- takes place almost immediatly after. KuroFai, but frankly, there's scarcely more then what's in the actual series. Oneshot.


Well, this is my first fanfiction, and let me warn you, it's sad. Like, really sad. It depresses me. It's basically what I think will happen at the end of Tsubasa, only fleshed out and not in summary form. I put the idea in a forum originally, and this is just the product.

Disclaimer: Yes, I'm CLAMP. I am also Elvis, green beans, an index card, the end of the world, and one of those wives who married older men to steel their mansions and sell them on eBay. Huh, that last one sounds kind of believable though... hm... Well, none of those previous things are true!

Special thanks to Celeste! My fabulous beta-reader!

Warning: Don't read CLAMP if you're homophobic! Don't read CLAMP fanfiction if you haven't read CLAMP, especially if you haven't read CLAMP because you're homophobic!

Contains KuroFai and, in the hardly mentioned background, SS. If either of those bother you... well then... go ahead and be bothered.

-go one shot... now!-

The clash was familiar, sword on sword, and it repeated itself again and again, the sound something that had become an almost rhythmic interlude in Kurogane's life. The throng of metal humming in his palm, and the almost surreal second vision, where the glint of the other's sword had him reacting before his mind could register the action he was about to take; the wrapped cloth in his palm, the hardness of the weapon below it.

Sweat forming in rivulets down him as he put all effort into making sure that was the only thing that ran down his body that the flesh of him was not broken, that the sword would always stay between.

Not just a barrier though, that it would keep this second sheet of flattened and sharpened metal back; that the other man's feet would find themselves stepping back, retracing any advancement. That _he_ would not reach Kurogane; that _he_ would not reach them.

It wasn't supposed to be Kurogane that stumbled. It wasn't supposed to be Kurogane's own feet that fumbled for the ground he had already stepped over. _Their_ voices, their callings to him, the squeals of that little white manju- it shouldn't be closer, no. Because the force in front of him, that sword that he had already seen dripping with rubies once before should not, _could not_ be getting closer to where _they_ were. Never. He would never allow it.

_Red on that metal, dripping as it is ripped from the cavity of her flesh. Eyes wide, mouth open - agape, as though the force of what she had been had been torn from her, regurgitated and now she was empty, empty, empty..._

No, never again.

But the metal burned its lightning, staining the air in front of him in a scarcely seen whir, faster still then his eyes could follow. Even faster than that second vision could sense it. And the face, unchanging, a righteous grin pasted on that mouth above a cleft-chin, eyes precise. Even that would barely allow itself in his vision for a moment before vanishing, before viewing him from another angle, bearing down on his being as the sweat poured faster, as the heart pummeled. He ignored the manju crying out to him, and he ignored Fai still alive but crumpled and half beaten on the floor. He ignored 'Syaoran,' calling, begging to help in a battle he would lose.

Steady. Breathe. Move, to the left. Slash. Everything but the sound of those footsteps and the whistle of wind being cut was white noise. Ignore it. Ignore it.

A high pitched cry, and the concentration broke as he turned his vision quickly to where Mokona and Syaoran stood, and then to a thin body crumpled half forwards, bending like a spineless doll, blond hair too long and blocking the face.

"Fai!!" Mokona's voice echoed high pitched like a young child's in the chamber, reverberating and answering itself again and again. _Fai! Fai! Fai! Fai...!_

Half risen and the sword apposing his hand swung out, not striking Kurogane but out towards Fai, and Kurogane felt unbidden terror rise in him for a moment, a golden eye wide behind the strands of golden hair. But it was fine, there was no new blood, Fai had just jumped too quickly while he was still wounded. He went down on a knee, arm clutched around his stomach, watching Kurogane through threads of hair with an unguarded face as Syaoran and Mokona ran to him, their footsteps echoing as Mokona's voice had.

But that golden eye had risen in terror, already pale skin whitening to the color of spent ash, and before Kurogane tensed and turned back to the enemy he had stopped watching he saw Fai rise.

His limbs, his arm had relaxed when Fai had risen, when no one had died after all. And it was from these fingers, limp around the cloth-wrapped handle, that the sword was forced from. Kurogane felt the last vibration of the metal as the second sword hit it from him, and his arm was suddenly shorter, the protective covering of flesh before his muscles and bones suddenly softer. It was like losing another limb in the battle. He might as well have.

Kurogane stepped back, and the floor vanished beneath him. He felt his stomach rise, and he righted his footing, feeling the splash as hit boot broke the surface of the water that had stopped running but moved again under his touch, lapped around him as he lifted the metal limb and wove himself backwards- he had heard the sword fall near here, had heard it break the water.

Something like shattering sounded, and he felt the vibration through to his organs, his heart seemed almost interrupted by the clatter as Fei Wong Reed's sword collided with the metallic surface of the limb.

A whir. A glint. The sickle like shape of the metal moving too fast to see, another clang and the feeling of being torn in half. His faux arm had fallen back into him, and only a few fingers still twitched on the far left side. Kurogane could feel his own blood thrumming, pulsing from the wound where the tiny metal snakes had worked themselves into his skin and had just been thrown out of.

The whir again, a whistle and air was sliced. And that grin, that unchanging self-righteous face. A sickle, a half moon of a swiftly moving sword hallowing his head and-

Gold.

Wide gold in front of him, glittering on the surface from unshed tears. Gold in front, strands of it mussed and everywhere, long over a sloping and narrow nose. Mouth partly open, and masks, all familiar and coldly smiling masks so very far gone...

_Red on that metal..._

Red, a blossoming flower of red on his robes, on the end of the sword coming out of him, the sword going through him...

_Eyes wide..._

That eye, that golden eye still so wide, still seeing him. He could see his own face reflected in the marble of dark, his own red eyes, his own stricken face...

_Mouth open..._

Mouth open, still clutching at the air, still sucking for oxygen even for lungs that had to be deflating. And soon, soon this would stop too.

NO!!!!!!!

Kurogane heard no sound, but knew he had screamed. The sword that had cut itself through Fai was pulled away, pulled out mechanically and meaninglessly, finished. More blood came, and it was almost graceful how Fai fell, how he slipped from the cold trap of steal through his stomach, folded in on himself and destroyed the frozen sanctity of water that was still half unmoving, stuck in time. That golden eye seemed to stay though, for as long as it could. Even as he fell, and he sucked in on the air, that eye stayed on Kurogane as Fai crumbled.

Bubbles were punctuating the water as Kurogane's limbs remained tense when they should not have, when the danger of losing his sword had already passed. He heard a noise, and turned, and saw that there was a sword now through Fei Wong Reed, that rubies were falling from him as well. Syaoran was rising now as the man fell, and the identical with that old blue eye stood silent, unmoving, soul-less and without orders.

In a flash the world began again to Kurogane, and he dove towards where bubbles still broke the surface and gold spread around a face-down head like a halo, the water around the frail thin slowly sinking form diluted pink and clouding red from the blood.

His hands, rough, wide, dark and shaking broke the surface and pulled him Fai from where he lay in the water, and water slipped from the mouth, and one outstanding breath gasped from those lips, and that eye wasn't empty in its gaze.

"No..." Kurogane said, and he remembered the scream he had felt rip from him before, but this single soft note seemed to drain him so much more completely. Even now Fai felt too cold, and he felt his hold tighten. Kurogane's fingers closed a tight grip around his arm until he could almost feel a faint heartbeat that wasn't his against him. He kept his face close enough to feel that faint, dying breath. To stare into that eye and somehow make it not go empty, worthless and unseeing as the deflated socket beside it.

"Hi... Kuro-sama..." Fai said, and his voice was a harsh and wavering whisper. The corners of the mouth rose, and for a moment Kurogane was sure he would hit him, if that smile, that fake and distant mask would dominate Fai's face _now_.

But no, the smile reached the eye. The face brightened, and Kurogane felt a shock to his core, a desperate rattling thing. The unshed tears on Fai's face he could see now, brimming at the edges and sending it aglitter. Fai blinked once and sent them down his rounded cheeks, and it looked like it had taken more energy than he could bear, that this single motion had shortened the already draining minutes...

"Why?" He whispered, and anger flooded him, made him burn, "Why?! Why would you still throw your life away?! You changed, I know you did! How could you be such an idiot!?"

"Hey..." Fai murmured, and it was a small exhalation of breath, and he sucked again at the air, still smiling, still crying, and dripping with the water that his blood was still draining into.

He was a vampire; they weren't supposed to not die like this. _They _were supposed to be strong. He was changed; he was supposed to not let himself die. He was Fai; he was not _supposed_ to die until after Kurogane did.

"I did change..." a rasping gasp escaped his lips, "Thanks to you." another breath, and it was getting harder. Kurogane could see him straining. "And them." the hand moved up in the water, sudden. A pale spider so week in its motions that it seemed impossible that it was lifting on its own. It fluttered in the air like a falling bird before dropping on the broken stomach, which still gleamed with all that precious, precious blood escaping him into the water. "And... Sakura-chan." Another intake, and this one broke in Fai's mouth and seemed to crumble on his tongue, this one made Fai shut his eye for a moment and concentrate on the simple motion of breathing.

Kurogane shut his own eyes and felt himself shaking. He lifted his own hand, arm still cradling the golden head, and brushed wet strands away from the pale skin with more gentleness then Kurogane thought he possessed. Fai's face was clammy under his fingers, the skin still running with the water, and he could feel the staccato of Fai's faint heartbeat in the skin. Kurogane rested his hand there, the contrast of light and dark, on the side of the face, fingers trailing to where the neck began, where he could still feel that heart beat. The last sputtering throbbing of that heart beat.

"How. Did. You. Change?" Kurogane said, and the words came out angry, punctuating, and with a small shock he heard his own voice break. "You jumped in front of the fucking blade! You chose to die! You said it wasn't something you would do, and here you go, just leaping forwards in the first opportunity, desperate to sacrifice yourself! How is this any different than before?!"

How could he have changed, if he had leapt before the blade? If he had thrown his life away as he had always been planning? If he would be crumpled and broken on the ground like the boy who wore his face and name, if he would be a limp cavity like the mother Kurogane had dragged behind him as he slaughtered monsters, if he would no longer make that face break into a smile, a real one?? And this was what he had _chosen?_

"Well," Fai said, and something between a sob and a laugh punctuated the end of the word, and that fluttering hand lifted again, this time to press its soft surface to Kurogane's cheek, to touch a salty wetness Kurogane just now realized was there- was trailing from his own livid eyes. The week fingers clutched slightly, shaking with their dying movements, and Kurogane leaned closer obligingly, so their noses nearly touched and he tasted blood in the air near Fai's mouth.

"I... didn't want... to die... yet." Fai murmured, and the last syllable came in a small, trailing hiss. The eye became half lidded as the body struggle to breath, to fill itself with air one more time.

Just one more time; another time, please, just another breath.

"I wanted... to... stay..." Fai said quietly, and there was this almost desperate look flooding him, different than those insecure moments when the mask had fallen for an instant and Fai had been in shock to feel his face naked and revealed- when Kurogane had looked at the real face before the facade was back on. Not all the words had been said, there were still things that wouldn't come in the remaining moments that the lungs would keep working.

The hand fluttered, clutched at his cheek, pulled with strength so weak he hardly felt his face lower, but he leant forwards anyway under that small pressure.

Kurogane wondered what a kiss would have been like when Fai's mouth wasn't quivering, when his arms were strong enough to wrap around his neck. But for a moment, he was able to breathe the same air as Fai was desperately collecting, and when he pulled away Fai's smile, the real one, shone again. Golden eye, mouth risen on both sides and almost shockingly revealing, as though Fai had never really been seen at all, and this was a rare interlude when darkness would fall away and light would reveal the minute detail. Happy, so happy, yet still crying even more now, tears still dripping into this water Syaoran had called sacred. Kurogane could see his own tears where they had fallen on Fai when their faces had been close, and Fai's mouth had been against his.

"Take care... of Syaoran... and Mokona..." Fai murmured.

He was slipping away now; Kurogane could feel it, as though the body in his arms was suddenly becoming lighter.

"Yes." He murmured softly, his face still close, his own eyes memorizing what that golden one looked like when it still saw the world; when it still saw him.

"And... save Sakura-chan... please..."

"I will."

"...s... sorry..."

"No."

"I...-"

A small few moments. A single kiss.

It shouldn't have been like this.

"Kurogane-san..." Syaoran spoke behind him, his voice soft and broken. The silence that followed was punctuated by soft, high pitched stifled sobs, Mokona's head buried in Syaoran's shoulder.

Kurogane rose, and Fai, or Fai's body anyway, slipped beneath the water.

He had work to do.

There was nothing he could do, and he felt his own face harden, his fingernails cutting half moons in his palm in a moment when he heard that head clunk against the bottom of the pool. A single small bubble escaped, and even beneath the water Kurogane could pick out the details of that face. There was still that smile, small and _used to be _so very _real_, though now it was empty without the person behind it.

He had work to do. Pain could come later.

But still unbidden the thought came, ridden with a kind of desperate agony Kurogane wished he hadn't felt before.

_It shouldn't have been like this!_

xXx

-Tokyo-

"Kuro-rin! Yoo-hoo! Anyone in there?" Kurogane shook his head, jerking out of his reverie as his vision was clouded by a head of blond hair, and two blue eyes stared gleefully up at him.

"Wha-?" Kurogane started, tearing his gaze away from the gates across the street. The building looked almost like a shrine, and he felt an itch deep in his legs almost to go there, to walk through the gate as though it were his own home and simply enter.

It was only faint though. The place just seemed... familiar, somehow, as though he would walk there automatically from years of practice, as though he had stood inside that gate before.

"Hey, we're gonna be late! I promised Sakura-chan I'd wish her luck before her first day! Come on, Kuro-puu, you don't want to be late on the first day back! We'll both get detention!" Fai leapt backwards suddenly, grinning and still in front of him, hands clasped and eyes narrowed in a way that usually meant something entirely idiotic was about to spring forth from his lips. "Of course, that would mean you get to spend an entire hour staring at my gorgeous face, so perhaps you do want to stand here and stare off into space for a short while longer... hyuu..."

Kurogane looked away, face burning partly because Fai was an idiot and partly because even the stupidest things that came out of that mouth tended to be just a _little bit _true.

Then there was the infuriating possibility that Fai knew this...

"Shut up! It's you who's gonna make us late! Come on, idiot!" Kurogane shouted, and reached forwards to grip Fai's arm in his hand, only to be quickly evaded.

Through the streets of Tokyo, only a few bystanders looked up to see the two boys, streaking through in their high school uniforms. One with blond hair and a brilliant smile on his face, arms lifted above his head as he ran as if flying, leaping. The other with an inflamed face swinging his fists as though he even fancied he was waving a sword, attempting in vain to catch the other one and almost grinning through his anger.

Those who were here every day scarcely glanced up, however. These two were nothing new.

~end~

Well, my first fanfiction and it has to be a couple. Damn it. And an angsty couple too, I've scarcely begun and I'm already being kind of fanfiction-wise typical.

Well, this idea came to me whilst I was writing in a forum, and I decided to flesh it out and make a first fanfiction out of it. Tragic, ain't it? I had to put that last bit in - possibly because I'm corny. And because writing the other bit made me sad. -_-

This is my prediction. Not the entire thing, just that Fai will die; I'll be kind of scared if this entire thing happens word for word. Because you know, it won't, don't worry.

Fai dying though is likely. He seems like the sacrificial type. Also, he's my favorite character, and the universe has proven (especially in the Harry Potter series, now that was just _freaky_) that all my favorite characters absolutely. Must. Die.

Review if you want, and if you do I will... answer. Again, first fanfic. Don't destroy me. If you have a comment on my writing, I'd love to hear it. If I've gotten something wrong somehow in the INSANELY complex world of Tsubasa, forgive me... I'm new... an infant...


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